Glass provides a resting place for wine, evening wear for Cinderellas, and a more dramatic exit from 44th-floor windows for Bruce Willises. Shatter artistic inhibitions with today's Groupon: for $90, you get a summer-school glass-blowing class (a $180 value), plus a $50 credit toward Level 1 classes, at Uptown Glassworks in Renton.

A team of experienced glass-blowers at Uptown Glassworks helps students to forge liquid glass into ornate, multi-colored artwork. No experience is necessary for the 90-minute summer-school class, during which a professional instructor guides students through the entire process, starting with retrieving 2,000-degree molten glass on a steel blow pipe. With up to three students per class, individualized attention is given to each apprentice in regard to design techniques, color application, and use of an optic mold. Molten glass can be blown into a vase, a bowl, a platter, a paperweight, or a rocking chair for an aging pet rock. To cement creative ingenuity, each work of art is engraved with the artist's initials and the date of the class.

Students can further their budding glass-blowing careers with a $50 credit toward Level 1 classes ($490 for five, two-hour classes). Uptown Glassworks's ambience awakens artistry with vaulted ceilings, generous space, and rafter beams set within a building built in 1902.